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Meet Rick Sharp of A Work In Progress Personal Training in Encinitas

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Rick Sharp.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Rick. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
As a kid growing up in the eighties and early nineties I had a fascination with superheroes and action movie stars like Van Damme, Bruce Lee, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. I wanted to be like them, but I was just a scrawny little kid from a small town in eastern Maryland. There were no local gyms to work out in, and no real mentors close by to help me so I messed around a little bit with weights throughout high school, but since I really didn’t know what I was doing or what I should be eating I didn’t really see any real results. After high school, I joined the Marine Corps.

By the time I graduated the 13-week boot camp at Parris Island whatever miniscule amount of muscle I had when I had arrived had been thoroughly stripped away. By the time I got to my 1st duty station in Okinawa I was a whopping 140 lbs at 5’10”. I was definitely no Arnold, and I didn’t have the Bruce Lee abs either! I felt like I was a sad representation of what a U.S. Marine should look like, not to mention how weak I had gotten. It took me a little while to get settled in there, but it wasn’t too long before I couldn’t stand it any longer and ventured into the gym on base.

Talk about intimidating! Even though I was a Marine, I was 18 years old and fresh out of boot camp. These guys would definitely have my back on a battlefield, but they weren’t going to cut me any slack in the weight room. I’m sure I provided them with plenty of entertainment as I fumbled around trying to figure out what I should be doing and how these machines worked. Eventually, a huge Marine named Kevin saw that I showed no signs of giving up, and in an effort to keep me from seriously injuring myself he spent a few hours teaching me how to design my weekly training sessions and how to properly perform a lot of the exercises I had been doing wrong.

Using proper form meant a drastic reduction in the amount of weight I had been slinging around, but within a few weeks I was able to handle the same weights as before, but this time with good form and a controlled tempo. A former state champion wrestler started teaching me about what I should be eating to grow and within less than one year I had gained more than 30 pounds and gotten leaner. The results were so dramatic that it almost threatened my promotion to Corporal because the Gysgt. that I worked for was convinced that I had to be taking steroids. (I wasn’t).

One good thing that happened as a result of people taking notice of my gains was that I got volunteered to start and oversee a remedial physical training group of Marines throughout the week who were either overweight, out of shape, or needed some help scoring higher on their physical fitness test to help them get promoted to the next rank. I really enjoyed helping them and seeing the positive results it had on their careers, and on their lives in general. This followed me to my next unit in North Carolina where I worked at 2d ANGLICO. We were an airborne unit, and before any Marines from our unit were to be sent to jump school they were required to pass our in-house fitness test twice in a row.

It was difficult for us to get slots at the school, and the last thing our unit wanted was for someone to show up unprepared. I was once again put in charge of a remedial PT group to help make sure that all of our Marines were ready to go when a slot came available. As a result of all of this training, when I finally got my spot at jump school I ended up as the honor graduate out of more than 400 other soldiers and Marines! Over the next few years, I continued to stay consistent in the weight room and with my diet and gained an additional 20 pounds of muscle. The biggest downside to gaining so much muscle was that I had to replace my entire uniform collection 3 times over the 6 years I was in……

After the Marine Corps decided to disband all ANGLICO units in 1997 I got orders to come out to California and when my enlistment ended in 1998 I decided to leave the Marines and go into personal training. I got my first certification that very same weekend and couldn’t wait to get started. I began working in the big corporate gyms, which was a good learning experience for me but definitely not something I wanted to continue doing for any length of time so I quickly found a gym in Cardiff by the Sea where I could work independently with my clients and just pay rent to the gym for the use of their space.

That worked really well for me and over the years I developed an excellent reputation as an honest trainer who was capable of getting his clients results. After a few years working there, I opened up my own private training studio in Encinitas where I currently serve my clients.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
There have definitely been some struggles along the way. Being good at your craft is one thing, but knowing how to properly run a business is a totally different skill altogether. Most personal trainers get into this industry out of a desire to really help people, so learning about things like marketing, and sales and business management are completely foreign to them and I definitely made a few costly mistakes along the way.

I have also had a few personal struggles as well, like getting divorced recently and having to find time to be a good father as well as run a business. That really set me back, but I love what I do so perseverance was able to keep me going through the hard times.

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the A Work In Progress Personal Training story. Tell us more about the business.
My business is running a private personal training studio, but it really is so much more than just how many sets and reps of certain exercises to do and how many calories you should be taking in. I specialize in complete lifestyle transformations and am known for being able to simplify and streamline the entire process of getting into optimal shape.

I’m not tied down to only one approach, but am able to find what works best for each individual client based on several different personal factors such as stress, sleep, personality type, etc. After working with so many different people and having to find out what makes them tick there really is a psychological component to our training sessions that keeps people on track towards reaching their goals and coming back in for tough workouts even when they really don’t feel like it. My clients know that I am committed to their goals, and that helps to keep them committed as well.

Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
Luck has definitely played a huge role in my life and business. Some things I thought were bad luck in the beginning actually turned out to be huge blessings in the end. The gym I was working out if in Cardiff abruptly closed their doors 6 months prior to the date they had been telling us they planned to shut down in an attempt to prevent any of the trainers from leaving before they closed to go out and do their own thing.

Lucky for me I had already been looking for a place prior to the gym closing down. I thought it was unfortunate that I hadn’t been able to find a place sooner, but luckily something opened up just in time with everything I needed and at just the right price. I was also able to buy a lot of the old gym’s equipment for my new studio at a great price saving me a lot of time and money. Before I rush to label things as “good” or “bad’ I try to remember the old story about the Chinese farmer whose response to everything was “We’ll see.”

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